Dwight Howard is a Los Angeles Laker. Shortly after 1 p.m. ET, the NBA approved a four team deal that sends Howard to L.A. and another 11 players to other destinations, most notably Andrew Bynum to the 76ers.

The Lakers receive Howard, Earl Clark and Chris Duhon from the Magic and send Bynum to the 76ers. The Sixers also receive Jason Richardson from the Magic. The Sixers send Andre Iguodala to the Nuggets. In return, the Magic receive Arron Afflalo and Al Harrington from the Nuggets; Nikola Vucevic and Moe Harkless from the 76ers; and Josh McRoberts and Christian Eyenga from the Lakers

The Magic also receive three protected first-round draft picks, one each from the Lakers, Nuggets and 76ers, and two second rounders, one each from L.A. and Denver. The Lakers are sending a protected 2017 first rounder and a conditional 2015 second rounder; the Nuggets a protected 2014 first rounder (the less favorable of their own and the Knicks pick they acquired) and a 2013 second-round pick from the Nuggets (by way of Golden State); the Sixers a protected 2013 first rounder.

The Magic also comes away with a $17.8 million trade exception, which they will retain for a year.

- glad that we saved the four #1 draft picks. that was a borderline ridiculous price to pay IMO.

- glad that we hung on to marshon brooks.

- i'm relieved that we didn't wind up with howard's troublesome prima dona personality, not to mention his determination to be a FA next summer. now the lakers are stuck with those headaches, not to mention most of their stars aging fast to offset all the talent.

- relieved that we don't have to worry about howard's back- who knows how big an issue that will be in the future?

negatives:

- i feel insulted that the magic were so dismissive of all the nets' various offers made across the months and years. in the end they wound up taking a trade which was probably worse. i don't know if this is a devos family thing against prokhy, or what, but it stinks. if i was a magic fan i would be none to pleased.

- specifically, the way the magic put a gun to howard's head last trade deadline and said "either re-enlist for one year or we're trading you to the lakers" was pretty weasily. in the end it got the magic a worse deal and wound up wasting everyone's time.

- if we had gotten howard, we wouldn't have had to make that very costly deal for johnson in order to persuade d-will to stay. howard's salary is actually less than johnson's IIRC, meaning we would have had more cap flexibility and might have been able to keep a player like gerald green. maybe.

- in the end the nets wind up with a middle-to-late playoff team that's not going to contend. not a knock against the nets- just keeping it real. meanwhile, with howard, there was the chance to contend. either way, though... very little salary flexibilty, which is always scary.

final thoughts:

we would have had a better team now with dwight, but we'll have a better team in the future by keeping the draft picks. it's important to remember that even with dwight, the team would have had some holes, and was no lock for a championship... nor even a lock to make the finals.

so, then..... for the next couple of years, the nets will make some noise and have a fun rivalry with the knicks while billy king can be expected to make excellent draft picks, which he usually does. then the team can hopefully trade the expiring contracts of the aging wallace and johnson, and the young talent (knock on wood) can step in and nicely fill those available positions. that will free up a huge amount of salary and will hopefully coincide with the continued development of lopez and the rising profile of the nets in brooklyn, making it easier to attract and keep the league's better players.

only thing that's wrong will be prokhy's prediction about a championship in five years, but how much was that really worth, anyway? in the end he wound up improving the nets' situation 90% across the board, so i feel very thankful for that.

Our team is perfect to start Brooklyn. We'll might get bounced in the 2nd round of the playoffs but we will probably turn some heads and in the process convert some Knicks fans into Nets fans. I think this year is all about letting our core mesh a little and to let the new BKN fans that we are a winning team and we will improve into a legit contender in a year or two.

Also like Gigs said, our team is a lot deeper without Dwight. We have a solid 1-5 and get to keep MarShon as a perfect 6th man. If we keep the injury bugs off our backs this season, I think our ceiling is the 3rd seed.

One of the best PG's. one of the better SG's. Nice energy players in between. Hopefully a healthy Lopez. The bench has come out nicely. Forget Howard. It would have been nice to have him. But he was the one who waived his opt out clause. That's his own fault.

the two favorites the past two summers did not end up getting the player.

LAL losing out on Chris Paul to the Clippers
BK losing out on Howard to the Lakers. :/

Forrester: That the Magic finally traded Howard was no surprise. That Orlando got so little in return for its rebuilding efforts (likely low first-round draft picks, little immediate cap relief) was. Add in the firing of Stan Van Gundy, the signing of Jameer Nelson to a pricey three-year contract and just enough talent to keep them out of the top-pick discussion, and the Magic appear headed from the playoffs to NBA limbo. And for a rebuilding team, limbo is no place to reside. GM Rob Hennigan has good front office bloodlines from Oklahoma City and he'll need to rely on them to speed Orlando's post-Howard life.

Jenkins: The Magic, not simply because they lost Howard, but because they failed to come away with either the second- or third-best players in the deal: Bynum and Andre Iguodala. The Magic have talked a lot about their plan moving forward and what they can do with the draft picks they netted and the cap space they cleared. But as far as players who can produce now, they essentially turned the best center in the NBA into Arron Afflalo and not much else.

Mannix: Orlando not only lost Howard but it also got nickels on the dollar for him. In a four-team trade the Lakers landed the big prize while the Sixers (Bynum) and Nuggets (Iguodala) acquired young, impactful players. The Magic? They got a serviceable guard in Afflalo, a good prospect in Moe Harkless and three first-round picks that will likely land at the bottom of the first round, along with cap relief. Say what you want about the Nets' Brook Lopez, but Lopez, Kris Humphries, MarShon Brooks and at least four first-rounders with similar cap relief sounded like a better deal to me.

Thomsen: Orlando suffered the worst summer, and no one else can come close. From a team with championship hopes and experience in all phases of the operation, it became a franchise with rookie leadership at GM and head coach and a roster led by Hedo Turkoglu. The Magic won't be bad forever -- this is a franchise with a history of recovering sooner than later -- but this year they're going to be terrible. I don't know who they're going to beat, and the talent figures to keep degrading as they try to dump contracts. They have to be the worst team in the league right now.

Of course anyone with common sense knows which deal is better. The magic was too confident they could sell Dwight at a high price, in the end they did not even get a decent price for him.

i guess it all depends on how you define "common sense."

i noticed that many writers and fans thought the end deal was slightly better than what the nets had to offer. i don't agree, but that's what i noticed. maybe the most logical point they had to make was that getting lopez, hump and brooks wouldn't make them elite and in fact would only delay the rebuilding process.

i noticed that many writers and fans thought the end deal was slightly better than what the nets had to offer. i don't agree, but that's what i noticed. maybe the most logical point they had to make was that getting lopez, hump and brooks wouldn't make them elite and in fact would only delay the rebuilding process.

still, the nets' picks would have been higher-rated, but whatever...

Lopez, Humphries, brooks wouldn't make their rebuilding process slower... Lopez and brooks are both young and have room to get better. Them three with the garbage Orlando has wouldn't be a playoff team so they would still get their lotto pick....

I would have to agree with NF93 and KiddLovesNets. With Brook and MarShon, the Magic would have been set at SG and C for the future. They would have probably built around them I understand that it might not be the best building block but it sure is a helluva lot better then Aaron Afflalo and trash. You're giving up the best center in the league, you should be getting back an young piece to build around. They didn't even get Bynum. That just puzzles me.

I think it comes down to Hennigan's idea of what rebuilding means. For him, it means staying light on contracts and becoming as bad as possible the next couple of years in order to rack up the highest lottery picks possible in order to bounce back as quickly as possible. That has to be why he passed on Iggy and Bynum as well as the Nets trio. Taking such players means better teams, which means lower picks, hence he felt the delay.

i agree, and if i was a magic fan i would still be beyond pissed. they're giving the fans almost nothing to root for the next couple of years until it gets interesting somewhere down the road. i mean, at least they could have put on a freak show and brought in allen iverson or stephon marbury to keep the fans entertained this year.

still, i understand what they're trying to do. they're hoping to draft a tim duncan or a kobe bryant or a lebron james... or at least multiple lesser stars to launch a new team with.

the magic are obviously taking an important lesson from all the 'very good but not elite' teams that are always knocking on the door, spinning their wheels, and never actually getting anywhere. the knicks are probably the standard bearer for that model, but such teams are as common as dirt. the nets have also been going through that for the past eight years or so-- the harder we tried to get back to being a finals-caliber team, the more mediocre our draft picks became and the more mediocre of a team we became. sad but true IMO.

so i'd say hennigan is an ambitious gambler, but he's also taking huge advantage of a basic reality- that you can totally piss off your base for a couple years yet there'll still be enough attendees and home viewers to limp through the dark years, financially. then, when the team suddenly gets better in 2-3 years, they won't be able to sell tickets fast enough and the past won't matter.

it's the luxury of being an NBA franchise in a solid market. by comparison, imagine trying to do that with some less-popular sports franchise in north america. next thing you know, you're folding up shop and are nothing but dust in the wind.